Subject: oldest eukaryotes? (off topic)
Date: Aug 16 10:05:29 1999
From: Jim Rosso - jrosso at mediaseek.com


I managed to hear a portion of an interview with the Australian scientist
on Science Friday on August 13. From what little I heard the evidence is
that they found oil that was older than oil should be. (In other words oil
does not last forever and this oil had lasted beyond that point and it
seemed that it had lasted beyond that point because of some eukaryotes that
were found in the oil) You can listen to the discussion on Read Audio.
Connect at
http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnpd01fm.cfm?PrgDate=08/13/1999&PrgID=5. You
can also buy a transcript of the discussion.

And yes I found the timing of the program ironic as hell.

Jim Rosso

At 07:33 AM 8/16/99 +0000, tuisto at oz.net wrote:
>At 11:26 AM 8/15/99 -0700, Deborah Wisti-Peterson wrote:
>
>>i just read this article that appeared in today's new york times
>
><snip>
>
> Last week, two days after the Kansas school board decision,
>>paleontologists published evidence that may push back the appearance of
>>complex life -- single cells with nuclei -- by as much as a billion years.
>
>Does anyone know what this is about? It appears to mean that there are now
>fossils of nucleated cells (eukaryotes, which include BIRDS) that are about
>a billion years older than Grypania, a fossil green alga from over 2
>billion years ago. This would mean that eukaryotes as well as bacteria are
>represented by fossils in excess of 3 billion years old. Alternatively, I'm
>not sure how universally Grypania is accepted as a legitimate eukaryote, so
>it might mean only that there is better evidence for fossil eukaryotes
>that are more than 1.7 billion years old. Did anyone notice this news story
>go by?
>
>Paul Talbert
>Seattle
>tuisto at oz.net
>

Jim Rosso
Issaquah, Washington
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